I am reading Robert Fagles’s translation of the Iliad (Penguin, $26pb, 0 14 027536 3). Achilles is sulking in his ships while the Trojans and Achaeans slaughter each other. Choreographing the moves with astonishing wilfulness are the self-serving, all-powerful gods. The brilliance of the poetry keeps the brutality always in the high beam. Every spear thrust, every disembowelment, every spillage of brains, every spurt of blood is revealed with lyrical clarity. The violence is unrelenting; this poem is almost unbearable.

I’ve read the Iliad before but don’t recall turning soft halfway through. I grant it was a long time ago; I’ve never had the desire to revisit it as I have the Odyssey. I take down Rieu’s prose translation in the Penguin classic edition. It falls open towards the end of Book XIV; my annotations have stopped a good deal earlier. I suppose one can imagine reading a classic, particularly one so well known, although I confess it is not an explanation that appeals. But, even if it were true, I am curious as to why I feel so overwhelmed now.

And just when I was needing some respite. I finished writing my latest novel, The Prosperous Thief, a short time ago. Opening in 1910 Berlin, it sprawls across three continents and the twentieth century. Filtering through it is the long shadow of the Holocaust. During the four years it took to write, I read extensively about the Nazi years and the Holocaust: memoirs, histories, fictions, plays and poetry, some well-written and sparking with insight, others not, but all portraying the hatred and violence which characterised that time. When my novel was finished, I needed a change and I reached for the ancient Greeks - as far from the barbarous twentieth century as possible.